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Moby Dick, the Great American Epic and alternative bible by Herman Melville, in the arresting blue Penguin Drop Caps (hardcover) edition, Php849 at National Bookstores.

Ang Kuwento ng Haring Tulala, Marlon James Sales’s Tagalog translation of Cronica del Rey Pasmado, the historical sex-comedy by the beloved Spanish author Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, published by Cacho Publishing House and designed by Ramon C. Sunico, Php350.

Also from Cacho: Ang Banal Na Aklat Ng Mga Kumag, stories and drawings by Allan N. Derain. We thought it was a translation of a French novel and kept saying “De-rahn”. It’s a Filipino novel, first prize winner at the Palanca Awards: unexpected, beguiling, and full of strange enchantments. Cover and book design by Ramon C. Sunico, Php350.

William Boyd, one of our favorite authors, takes a crack at the James Bond franchise with Solo, a Bond novel set in West Africa in 1969. Boyd knows the terrain well—A Good Man In Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Brazzaville Beach are set in Africa, and he’s done literary espionage in Any Human Heart and Waiting for Sunrise. So we have high…high-ish hopes for this book. Well, higher than our expectations for the “P.G. Wodehouse novel” by Sebastian Faulks. The idea makes us want to pelt him with kippers, cucumber sandwiches, newts, etc. Solo, Php729.

It’s like that remake of Ishmael Bernal’s Salawahan, entitled Status: It’s Complicated. We’re not even going to watch it, because we are so fond of Salawahan, there is no way the remake could possibly live up to our expectations. The trailer alone is annoying. It is neither arch, ironic, nor fabulous—the three essential adjectives for Salawahan.

The short satirical novel by the genius recluse whose few photographs date back to his schooldays, so nobody knows what he looks like, Php375.

Read Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Thank you, Mr. Reed.

Our favorite Lou Reed lyrics: The Gift.

Waldo Jeffers had reached his limit. It was now Mid-August which meant he had
been separated from Marsha for more than two months. Two months, and all he had
to show was three dog-eared letters and two very expensive long-distance phone
calls. True, when school had ended and she’d returned to Wisconsin, and he to
Locust, Pennsylvania, she had sworn to maintain a certain fidelity. She would
date occasionally, but merely as amusement. She would remain faithful. Keep reading.

Saffy says: Get to work! Now!

After a long and infuriating delay, here we are. We still haven’t sealed arrangements with the sponsor, but let’s not wait any longer. These are the participants to our first writing workshop:

Gerry Cacanindin
Jovan Cerda
Butch Maddul
Allan Carreon
Michael P. De Guzman
Patrick Limcaco
Evan Tan
Jamie Ann P. Zamodio
Noel Pascual
Ryan Rivera
Reginald Tolentino
Rommel Tullao
Sharon Matienzo
Charlene Bobis
Jaime Hernandez IV
PJ Cana
Angus Miranda
Michael Co

Congratulations, you’re going to write a book! More importantly, you’re going to finish that book, and we’re going to make sure you do. (Cue lightning, thunder, maniacal laughter.)

Did we forget anyone? If we did, please send our acceptance email back to us and we’ll add you to the list, with our apologies.

Participants, please email us at koosama@gmail.com and let us know whether you would prefer to start the workshop on 23 November 2013 or on 11 January 2014. We’re meeting four times within a seven-week period (Every other week, so you have enough time to finish your chapters).

And then, please send us a brief description of the book you intend to work on, and the first chapter if it’s been written.

Yes, the holidays are looming, your schedules will soon be packed, and there will be very little time for anything. Welcome to the writing life.

L-R: Barkhad Abdi, Tom Hanks and Faysal Ahmed in Columbia Pictures’s Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass

Captain Phillips, the thriller by the reliable Paul Greengrass, is excellent. We know exactly what’s going to happen, but we sit there clenched for two hours anyway. Based on actual events, the film stars Tom Hanks, who returns from a long series of blah projects (Though we really liked Cloud Atlas). Our only beef with the movie: A ship with no Filipino crew?? Is there such a thing?

We’re seeing a mini-trend in Hollywood cinema: the protagonist struggling to survive in a hostile environment using only their wits. Earlier there was Gravity, in which Sandra Bullock as the survivor of an accident in space tries to get back to earth. (You can bitch all you want about the scientific errors; it’s magnificent). Now there’s Tom Hanks’s Phillips, whose ship is boarded by Somali pirates. The actual crew members in that pirate attack are contesting Phillips’s version of events; the dispute doesn’t make the movie any less gripping.

Coming up: Robert Redford as the lone sailor steering a damaged boat on the stormy seas in J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost. (Chandor’s previous project was Margin Call, a Wall Street drama with a terrific ensemble and lots of talk. His second movie has one actor and very little dialogue.)

Alone against terrifying odds. Is that America’s mood at the moment?

L-R: John D’Leo, Robert De Niro and Dianna Agron in Relativity Media’s 2013 film The Family, directed by Luc Besson

The Family stars mob movie veterans Robert De Niro (if we have to name his mafia movies…) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Married to the Mob) as Americans in the witness protection program, living in France with their two teenage children. It’s funny in parts, but mostly just odd. We missed the opening credits, and given the movie’s abrupt shifts in tone, we thought it was a first film by someone with a beef against the French. Then we find out that it’s by Luc Besson.

The Family is a predictable culture clash comedy in which the French condescend to the Americans but the Americans’ dexterity with violence wins in the end. Basically De Niro is doing a parody of his career highlights, but he seems to be enjoying himself. Dianna Agron is very good as a young girl in the throes of first love, but she seems to be in a different movie altogether (not her fault). Pfeiffer is fabulous in the scene where she explains the difference between olive oil and butter—we suddenly recalled the bit in Scarface where she snorts coke off her fingernails.

The result is a slightly awkward yet enjoyable homage to American mob movies. You can’t get more homage-y than De Niro’s ex-mobster attending a French film society screening of Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese is credited as producer). This is the kind of movie where you wish the mobster’s family would beat all their neighbors to a pulp.

We sense another mini-trend in the current cinema: Americans fighting to survive in a world that hates them. If it’s any consolation, they still save the day.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Let me out of this carrier!

I would like a caffe latte, please. Hold the coffee, double the milk.

You must be my human cousins. Hello, I’m Drogon. Yes, my right eyeball is smaller than my left and it’s not a complete circle. It looks like the Death Star under construction.

Your name is Daenerys? That’s hysterical! We should hang out and, like, reconquer Westeros. Say “Dracarys”. Come on.

No, Ma’am, I am not Siamese. I don’t know about my breed, I used to be a street cat.

We have been lucky in our publishing career: we’re allowed to write pretty much whatever we want, and on the few occasions that we weren’t 100 percent enthusiastic about the work assigned to us, we didn’t exactly suffer, either. However, there is one thing about our life in publishing that’s bothered us (and it’s not the fact that the big bucks have been elusive). We’ve never really been edited.

Copy-edited, yes. Proofread, yes. But no one has ever given us a clear and straightforward assessment of our work: its strengths and weaknesses, intellectual failings, emotional bullshit, lines that must be crossed, ambitions we might harbor. No one who knows us well and whom we trust calls us out when we settle for being amusing when we could do more. (Reviewers don’t count; speaking as a reviewer, we don’t necessarily have your best interests in mind.)

Having seen many movies in which the editors of the great New York publishing houses take their writers to four-martini lunches to talk about their manuscripts, having read about Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins, J.D. Salinger and William Shawn, and all the great writer-editor tandems, we’ve always wanted the guidance of a mentor-editor. Maybe if we’d majored in Creative Writing instead of Comparative Lit, or attended more writing workshops, or enrolled in an MFA program, we might’ve found that editor.

We joined exactly one workshop, the UP Summer Writers’ Workshop, during our sophomore year in college. It was wonderful: we met writers, talked about our work processes, felt less alone in the lit universe. But the discussion of our story went like this: “Oh, it’s the J.D. Salinger fan. Hilarious! Next.” Sure, there were a couple of angry Marxists muttering on the sidelines, but they never said anything openly.

Since then we’ve had some wonderful publishers, but we’ve been hoping for a Gordon Lish to come along and slash and burn our drafts for our own good. This is not humility—our ego is vast and swallows planets (like Galactus). But every time we have a new book out, we can’t shake the feeling that we’re missing something vital.

See how Gordon Lish edited Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Some weeks ago, while preparing the manuscript for our new collection of short stories, it occurred to us that we know someone who is a brilliant editor and a great friend. She also happens to be the most well-read person we know. So we asked Tina Cuyugan (editor of Forbidden Fruit, former World News editor of Today) to edit our book.

The other day Tina sent us her edits and comments—which stories were strong, which parts were structurally unsound, what could be left out, and so on. It was as if we had been scribbling away in a dark and airless tower, and someone opened a window. And not for us to leap out of. For the first time, we got a proper appraisal of our work. Why didn’t we do this sooner? Now we know what we can do. Suddenly, we feel like a writer.

Every writer needs an editor. No exceptions.

Get the e-book at our online store, opening in late November.